I've Heard All This Before
by Gandalf3213
Summary: A week. A week of repairing Hogwarts, of grieving, of funerals, a week of memories. After the battle of Hogwarts, Harry discovers the depth of the grief and despair, and also of the joy that he brought in bringing an end to the reign of Voldemort.
1. Common Room

**I don't own Harry.**

_Neither can live while the other survives._

Harry barely noticed Ron sitting down next to him, absent, for once, from Hermione. He was still lost in thought. His entire life since entering Hogwarts had been centered around the destruction of Voldemort. So what was he to do now?

There was also the other things that had happened tonight. Fred's death. Lupin and Tonks' death. His own death and coming back to life. The destruction of the Horcruxes. The near-demolition of the school he cared so much about.

Ron's voice was hoarse when he suddenly spoke. "We should probably get some sleep."

Harry gazed around the familiar dormitory. They weren't the only ones still awake. In a bed next to them were Dean and Seamus, catching each other up on what they'd been doing all year, glad to be reunited once again. Glad to be alive.

He was exhausted. Had it only been this morning that he'd walked out of Shell Cottage with the intention of breaking into Gringotts? It seemed years past, more like a memory of another life.

Because the grief still weighed heavily on him, heavily on his friends and the families of the fallen. The Weasleys, George especially, would take a while to get used to Fred's death. And he, Harry, was now left with a two-month-old godson. Harry shook his head. Those thoughts could wait until morning.

Glancing over at Ron, he noticed tears in the boy's eyes. He placed a hand over Ron's, suspecting that he knew the cause of them, and waited for him to speak.

"How could so much happen in one night?" Harry waited quietly. He knew that Ron would eventually say what he wanted to. Another minute passed in which the only sounds were the quiet, almost melodic voices of Seamus and Dean. Ron's voice was constricted when he continued. "It was...the worst thing, Harry. To see you dead."

"I wasn't dead." Harry corrected automatically.

"Didn't matter. I thought you were." Harry remembered the time when he had thought that Ron was dead, when Mrs. Weasley's boggart had turned into him. "It was like my insides were frozen."

"I know."

Ron's eyes seemed to glow in the darkness, the blue reflecting Harry's own green. "And then Fred died."

"He died before I did." _I think_. Harry added. All the events were getting jumbled in his head. The Room of Requirement, the diadem, Ravenclaw Tower, Voldemort, the Great Hall. Which order had they appeared in?

"Oh, yeah."

Harry didn't have siblings, or at least he didn't have any official ones, but he felt at that moment that he could not miss the laughing red-head any more than he would if Fred had been his own brother.

The dragon, Snape dying, memories, his parents coming out of the ring, Kreacher leading the house-elves into war. More memories, more than he would have thought he'd get in a life time. And Harry understood why Dumbledore had needed the Pensieve.

Ron's hand suddenly floated out from under his and the bed creaked. The sound seemed to remind Harry of his exhaustion. For he was exhausted. It had been the longest day in his life, and he'd had a lot of long days.

"Good night, Harry."

At the same time, across the room, Seamus said the same thing to Dean, and the light that had made the room bright was extinguished.

The snake, the shrieking shack, Fred pinned under gigantic rocks, the searing flames, mountains of hot metal, Dumbledore, walking towards him at Kings Cross.

Eventually, the flashes stopped coming, and as Harry gazed out his window, his sight blurred by the loss of his glasses, he saw smoke coming out of Hagrid's chimney.

As he drifted off to sleep, he registered that his scar had stopped burning for the first time in nearly a year.

**Please review.**


	2. Great Hall

**I don't own them.**

_I Solemly Swear that I am up to no Good._

Harry stood between Ron and Ginny in the Great Hall, looking around, seeing people repairing some of the damage, people Disapperating, people walking among the fallen. A minute didn't go by when someone didn't pat him on the back or touch his shoulder, all thanking him, congratulating him on his defeat of Voldemort.

He really wished they'd stop. He didn't deserve any of it. Glancing around, he took in all the people who had died for him. Fred, lying just feet away, was still surrounded by much of his family. Lupin and Tonks, so soon after they'd had a son, were dead. Like his parents. Colin Creevey, Justin Finch-Fletchly, Hannah Abbot, Alicia Spinnet, and countless others lay dead at his feet _because of him_.

But still...

He couldn't help thinking it could have been a hundred times worse. He still had Ron and Hermione beside him, thank God, and Ginny...Ginny, who's warm body pressed into his. She was definitely alive, though tears were streaking down her face.

Another person touched him on the shoulder just as George stood up, bringing the body of his dead twin with him. Harry saw that George alone of all the Weasleys wasn't crying. He just looked lost, confused, helpless. Harry wished he could take the pain away.

Then George vanished with a small _pop_. Harry glanced around, noticing that none of the other Weasleys went after him. "Where's he going?" Harry heard Hermione ask Ron.

"Hmm...?" Ron looked at them, and Harry could see tears in his blue eyes. "Oh, yeah. Muggles." He bit his lip before saying. "Well, now that You-Know-Who is gone, there are traditions wizards follow when someone...when someone's died." He was quiet for a moment, then continued. "The person who was closest to the dead in life will stay with the body for a day, will dig the hole to bury it in, and will make the headstone." Ron was still staring at the spot where his brother had vanished.

Harry put a hand on Ron's shoulder. He could never tell him how much it meant just to see him standing there. He had been close, so close, to dying. Both he and Hermione should be, by all rights, dead by association. It would make sense. An equal trade.

Peeves flew by the doors to the Great Hall. Harry caught a snatch of the song _'Wee Potty's the One.'_ He felt Ginny's gaze and turned around to find himself face-to-face with Luna.

A lopsided necklace of old Gobstones hung around her neck, battered by the battle. She was smiling at him, her hands plunging into her pockets and withdrawing a purple pamphlet. Harry took it with shaking hands, expecting another one of Umbridge's 'no half-breed' lectures. Instead he found himself staring at...himself under a few bold words.

**The Boy-Who-Lived Defeats You-Know-Who**

Harry flipped open a page. In the very first column was a list of all those who had died in the last night of battle. His eyes were drawn to one name in particular, _Severus Snape_. So they had listed him as one of the good guys.

Another page revealed most of the information about the night, going between the DA, his own death, and, of course, the death of Voldemort. It had left out the Horcruxes and Hallows though. Harry didn't think the world was ready for that kind of information.

The next page was devoted to a paragraph telling people to ignore 'blood-status' and other terms like 'half-breed' or 'muggle-born'.

More pages, at least twenty more. Harry couldn't imagine how this had all been created in less then a day. "Who?" he began, but Luna cut him off.

"My dad. He's been out of Azkaban for a while now and he got most of the news from Aberforth." Harry turned the pamphlet over, about to give it back, when a short sentence at the bottom made him stop dead.

**We sell ****Knargles**

And Harry laughed. For what seemed like the first time in eternity Harry laughed, and he attracted stares from everyone in the Hall. Ginny leaned over his shoulder and read the paper, and started laughing. Ron and Hermione came on either side of Harry and peered at the print and started joining in, their laughter mixing together as one.

**Review?**


	3. Walks

**I own them not.**

_"Of course it's happening in your head, Harry, but why on Earth should that mean it's not real?"_

Harry walked with Ron, Hermione, Luna, Neville, Dean, and Seamus around the edge of the lake, taking turns filling each other in on what had happened in the previous year. Harry could not believe all the stuff they had been doing for the DA at Hogwarts.

"Neville was leader, of course." Seamus said, his swollen face moving into what could be interpreted as a smile as he patted Neville on the back. "He was damn good at it too, with getting people to join and the Room of Requirement stuff."

Neville blushed, his fingers still on the Gryffindor sword that he held in his free hand as if he had forgotten it was there. "That's only because you were too reckless, Seamus." He admonished, his eyes narrowing. Dean hit Seamus, looking upset. "But it was Ginny who did the most, really. She thought of everything."

"Me and Luna." She amended, smiling easily at the dreamy girl who nodded sagely. "She was good distraction."

Neville frowned. "I guess we know now why Snape always seemed to believe Luna. She sent him on all kinds of wild-goose-chases."

Ginny nodded. "Yeah, a lot of what Snape did makes sense now. Like how he never hurt Seamus too bad for sneaking into his store cupboard, or how he only sent us to the Forest or trying to steal the sword."

"Which was fake." Hermione interjected. "It was a fake one in his office."

They walked quietly for a while, looking out over the lake. There was no one else outside, except for the few who were trying to rebuild the school from the outside in. Even Hagrid was in the castle, trying to help where he could. Harry was content to be with his friends, still amazed that they were next to him. Still amazed that he was there.

"The best thing about the year." Seamus said quietly as they stood under the old beech tree on the far side of the lake. "Was definitely that radio program. We could get it from inside the school after Ginny fixed the radio a little bit."

Neville smiled. "Yeah, that was cool. Sometimes we'd call DA meetings and just sit in the Room of Requirement, listening to them. It was, like, our only connection to anything real, because almost no mail was getting through except to the Slytherins."

"We heard that too." Ron said quickly. "While we were on the move."

"What were you _doing_?" Luna asked, her eyes round with interest. Harry felt Ron and Hermione look at him, so he cleared his throat.

He decided to tell them the truth. The whole truth. Since he didn't know exactly where the beginning was, he started as far back as he could remember, just before his birthday when fourteen people showed up for him. From there he went to the wedding, the fall of the ministry, and going to Grimwald Place, taking a few minutes to explain exactly what Grimwald Place was.

As he talked, Harry realized how much they had accomplished in one year. Now there was infiltrating the Ministry, and all those nights of camping out. He told Dean how he had overheard him and Ted Tonks near that river.

He was interrupted only occasionally by Ron and Hermione adding something he forgot or correcting his timeline when he went out of order. The first time someone else interjected was when he had been talking for nearly an hour and was finally, _finally_ up to the point where he gave himself up for Voldemort.

"What happened, when you were dead?" Ginny asked, her hand squeezing Harry's. He looked down at her, seeing the light bounce off her brilliant red hair.

Harry swallowed hard. How would she take it if he told her there had been a part of Voldemort living inside of him? "I...I saw Dumbledore. We were in King's Cross Station, but I wasn't really, dead, Gin." He was addressing her directly, looking into her eyes, trying to make her understand. "There was a part of Voldemort, one of his Horcruxes, inside of me. It died, not me."

Ginny's mouth opened in an _O_ of surprise. Harry looked away, ashamed, sure that now, finally, she would see how unsafe she had been, being with him. Instead, when he turned back towards he, she kissed him, harder and longer than ever before.

And at long last, Harry started to see that maybe, just maybe, out of all the chaos and destruction of the past seventeen years, something good could happen, even to him.

**Review? Pretty please?**


	4. Grief

**I own it not.**

_We must try not to sink beneath out anguish, Harry, but battle on._

The next day the funerals began.

Harry looted through his clothes until he found a pair of black robes that fit him. He pulled them on, numbly thinking about what he was doing today.

There were four funerals that day. Collin Crevey's was first, followed by Lavender Brown's, Justin Finch-Fletchy's and Michael Corner's. There were more being held that day, but Harry felt that four was all he could handle.

Ron and Hermione met him in the Common Room. They were still staying at Hogwarts, at least until they figured out what they would do. They looked at each other blankly, and Harry saw it written plainly on their faces. _How could they die?_

They walked out of the castle without speaking. They saw very few people, though there were signs of their work everywhere. Hogwarts would be rebuilt. In fifteen minutes, they had reached the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest.

But Harry was still thinking about the deaths. How could they die? Harry knew all of these people, they were his age. They had so much left to live for, and they had died fighting Voldemort. Died fighting for him. Harry's hand reached out automatically and grabbed Hermione's, which he squeezed comfortingly, his other hand groped for Ron. He knew that his friend was dreading later in the week, when his brother's funeral would be held.

Squeezing the hands of both his friends, Harry spun on the spot, taking Ron and Hermione with him as they vanished into thin air.

The first person they saw when they reappeared in the graveyard with a small, resounding _pop_ was Denis Crevey, one hand placed easily on the tomb of his dead brother. Harry felt his heart slip down into his stomach at the sight of him. Taller than he remembered, with sandy hair and big eyes, Denis could be the replica of Collin.

Hermione let go of his hand to join Luna, who was standing a few yards off, wearing a pair of pink robes that somehow fit the event perfectly. Ron wandered towards the back of the small crowd to stand with Dean and Seamus. It was only then that Harry realized that most of the people there were Hogwarts students, and that the majority of them had been in the DA.

Harry's hand jumped up to his already messy hair when he realized that nearly all of the students who had died in that terrible battle had been DA members.

Leaning against a wall, Harry thought of how weird this whole thing was. He should be happy. He knew he should be. Voldemort was dead, along with his followers. His scar had stopped burning. The prophesy was fulfilled.

And yet...the price had been high. So high. The price had been Snape, Lupin, Tonks, Collin Crevey and Lavender Brown and Angelina and _Fred_. So many people, so many friends dying to kill one person.

Even in death, Voldemort had found a way to torment him.

The day continued. Harry found himself at another funeral, this time for Lavender. Hermione dutifully stood next to Pavarti, who stood with her hands behind her back. Not crying, but shaking, as she watched her best friend get lowered into the ground by her father and sisters. Ron was also shaking during the service, and Harry could only put a hand on his arm to comfort him.

Justin's funeral was a blur. The sun was high in the sky by now, the perfect day seeming to mock him as he looked around at the crowd. Most of the people were the same. DA members showed up at every funeral, though they rotated in and out. Luna had become a part of Harry's group, traveling with them throughout the day.

There was a moment during Justin's funeral that Harry felt he would always remember. A boy, older and taller than Justin but looking just like him stood on the platform. He looked around at the crowd and smiled a little.

"I wish I could take the pain away." His voice was soft and adamant. " I wish I could take all of the pain I've seen and lock it away somewhere. But I can't. We just have to keep on going as best we can, even if we think we can't move anymore. Just one foot in front of the other, and the pain will fade. At least that's what I've heard." He stepped down, not saying anymore, but Harry realized that those words echoed the thoughts that he'd had all day.

At the last funeral, Harry saw Ginny. Her red hair was visible from the moment they apperated into the graveyard. She didn't say anything as she walked over to them, she just slipped a hand into Harry's (Hermione had mysteriously vanished, pulling Ron with her) and leaned against his chest. Harry could feel her shake, though couldn't see any tears.

The sun was dipping beneath the trees when Harry cried for the first time that day, the tears coming silently and without warning as Ginny leaned against him, grieving for the loss of her friends that could never, ever return.

**Review?**


	5. Sunrises

**I don't own them.**

_"Always the innocent are the first victems. So it has been for ages past, so it is now." _

More funerals. Harry found himself becoming weary, the pain seeming to engulf him to points where he could neither speak nor breathe. Ron, Ginny, Hermione, and Luna had become constant companions, and Harry felt that they were his life-lines, now that he felt he was drowning in a sea of his own loss and guilt.

And still, at every funeral he went to, every place that he went, Harry was surrounded by praise, cheers, happy, smiling people who seemed to have no idea at how high the price for this victory was. Harry tried to smile at these times, tried to recapture the happiness he had felt with his friends by the lake, but the feeling had once again escaped him, remaining elusive even when he attempted to grasp at it.

On the third morning ― Harry honestly couldn't say what day it was ― he and Ron both woke early, up before the sun and all three girls. Harry didn't look at Ron as they dressed simultaneously and went outside the Burrow.

The Weasleys had invited Harry and Hermione and anyone else to stay, but currently it was only the five of them, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, and Percy. Harry found the quietness before dawn both disturbing and comforting.

Picking their way across the over-grown, patchy lawn, still not looking at each other, Harry and Ron sat down on the large rock near the entrance to the woods where they had so often played Quidditch. Them against the twins. Them against Hermione and Ginny. Them against the world.

The pre-dawn sky was a beautiful lavender. Harry picked out his favorite constellations from the ones showing in the sky. Pegasus, Andromeda, Hercules. He remembered summers at the Dursleys, staying out as late as he could, his stars his only companions.

Ron found his voice first, looking up at the moon and the morning star. Mourning star. "Who's..." his unused voice cracked. "Who's today?"

Harry shrugged, unwilling to bring his mind back from the Heavens. "Angelina's is at twilight. I haven't looked at the rest of the list since...since I don't know when. Hermione has it."

Ron nodded, accepting the half-answer. "Do you sometimes wish you could just leave it all, and sink into this?"

Harry glanced sharply at his friend. "What're you talking about Ron?" His down-to-Earth, blunt best friend rarely talked like this. Only when his mind was really somewhere else.

"I...I don't know. Forget it." The first real rays of sunlight peaked over the trees. Watching for a few more minutes, it was Ron again who spoke first. "It's going to be weird, though. It's like, the entire time we were at Hogwarts, we were just thinking about getting rid of Voldemort, and, you know, living through it." Harry snorted against his will. This was more like Ron.

"But now...it's really different now. No Voldemort. No horcruxes or riddles or prophesies." He paused for a moment, watching as the morning star gave into the sunlight, then, almost too silently for Harry to hear. "No Fred."

Harry pretended he didn't hear the last part, but felt a deep, swelling sadness again envelope his chest. Ron continued, words spilling out as if a dam had been opened.

"I think...I think I'll stay with George this summer." He said it quietly, as if trying to keep his emotions in check as he said the words. "He'll need help with the shop and...other stuff." Harry had pretended, over the last couple of days, that he didn't notice how far Ron's grief for his brother went, but now he couldn't ignore it.

"It's okay to miss him, Ron." He said quietly, his hand laying over his friends larger, freckled one. "I miss him too. You can let it out now." The words brought back a memory of the very boy ― man ― they were talking about. _You shouldn't keep all those emotions bottled up inside, Harry, let them all out. There might be some people fifty miles away who didn't hear you._

Harry relayed this remembered sentence to Ron, who let out a strangled half-laugh. The sun, now fully presenting itself, made the tears dripping down Ron's cheeks sparkle.

Harry felt a presence behind him and turned around. It was only when Ginny wiped them away that Harry realize that there were tears on his own face.

**Please review.**


End file.
